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Comment on Yes, We Have Free Will. No, We Absolutely Do Not

I don’t think it’s that simple. Decisions can be based on more than one factor. Nobody doubts that the things around you affect your decision, the question is whether they fully determine your decision.

And when someone asks “What do you want to eat tonight?”, intuitively it doesn’t seem that your answer is fully determined at the moment the question is asked - otherwise why would it take so long to reach the answer? Nor is it random, because asking it again wouldn’t produce a different answer.

Which is not to say that free will definitely does or does not exist. But you’ve described all decisions as necessarily predetermined or random, and that is a false dichotomy. The third possibility is none of the above, which implies free will.

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Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I can definitely see why one might read my comment as presenting a dichotomy, which is why I was actually very careful to not do that in my formulation.
Well, except that I am talking about true randomness (which I doubt exists, but we haven’t proven that on the quantum level). The more colloquial definitions of randomness, I count towards badly understood inputs or just a lack of inputs.

Thing is, if we add true randomness to an input-based decision, it stops being predetermined, but there’s still a logically conclusive choice you’re going to make, based on the incomplete inputs you have. You cannot ‘freely’ decide to not pick that choice, because you have literally no reason not to pick it.

Even if you think, you’re going to pick the ‘illogical’ choice for a change, that is still part of your inputs. It’s likely even baked into our genes, because what appears logical is often not actually the best choice and those who successfully experimented, ultimately survived+procreated.

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- FlowVoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  if we add true randomness to an input-based decision, it stops being predetermined, but there’s still a logically conclusive choice you’re going to make, based on the incomplete inputs you have. You cannot ‘freely’ decide to not pick that choice
  
  I think you are contradicting yourself. If you cannot freely choose something else, then your choice is predetermined.
  
  Whereas if a choice stops being predetermined, then there is no “logically conclusive choice” that you are definitely going to make. There is a range of possible choices, one of them is chosen by you, and the others could have been chosen but weren’t.
  
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